hey everyone and welcome back to another mining chamber video in today's video i'm
going to go over helium hotspot miners as well as the helium network in general i will explain
it to you so you understand how it works and i will also tell you everything you need to know
before buying the hotspot so then at the end of this video it is easier for you to decide
if this is a good investment for you now let's go ahead and get into it right after the intro
helium has been a really hot topic the past month due to many awesome influencers creating different
content about it as well as the price action of the hnt token which is what the hotspot miners
get paid with all this has resulted into many people investing into hot spots without really
understanding the helium network first so hopefully this video will give you a human
friendly understanding of the network and how everything works from a user to a miner now i
won't be going into the technical details so that it is easier for you to understand but if after
this video you want another part with diving in depth on how helium works then please feel free to
let me know in the comments below so let's first start with the helium network the helium network
is made by the hotspot miners that are placed around the globe these hotspots use a really
small amount of your wi-fi bandwidth in return of providing long fight to the network which is
similar to wi-fi but it covers a lot more distance so when these hotspots are placed around the world
it builds the network also known as the people's network through the proof of coverage algorithm a
secure fast and cheap network that companies and individuals can use for their internet of things
devices now you may wonder what is internet of things devices iot devices for short internet
of things can be anything from gps locators and cars scooters and other means of transportation
to sensors and any smart devices that communicate with the internet to be able to send information
now the mainstream way that these iot devices send information is by using cellular network which is
more expensive and requires a lot more work to set up comparing to the helium network to be able to
use the helium network you will have to create a console account with helium register your iot
products and then purchase data credits data credits are like mobile minutes that can be
purchased for a prepaid phone plans only instead of voice data data credits pay for
sensor or device data transferred on the network when data credits are purchased some hnt will
be burned causing a deflationary effect which is always good for the price of the hnt token
now as we know with ethereum it is a similar concept with what they are implementing on eip1559
with burning the fees rather than giving them to the miners which can also lead to a positive
price impact now the only difference is that hnt has a max supply while ethereum has no max supply
so over time hnt supply will decrease causing more scarcity which in return usually means the
price will go up but still keep in mind that it is cryptocurrency and it can go up or down which
is completely fine now back to the network your smart devices at home will not be using the helium
network if you have set up a hotspot or if there is one near you because when you set up your smart
doorbell you most likely connected it to your home wifi directly rather than the helium network long
fi which you'll need to set it up through the user console like i mentioned earlier as of now there
are many integrations between different iot cloud platforms with helium as well as many companies
that are using the helium network which is always good to see in a project like this hopefully that
clarified for you the vision and the goal for the helium network also known as the people's
network and what is the use case for it now let's talk about an essential piece of this network
the hotspots the hotspot miners are tiny little devices that look like an internet router and they
come in different flavors they draw a really small amount of power as well as take a small amount of
your wi-fi bandwidth to be able to supply the long fight to the helium network in return you
get paid in hnt tokens based on multiple different factors which i will cover later on in the video
so i would highly suggest not rushing into buying them until you get to that part now when the
helium network was still fairly new anyone was able to make their own hotspot miner at home
by using a raspberry pi and a specific module as well as a good antenna but now you have to get
them through the manufacturers that are approved by helium you can still make your own at home but
the only thing is that you won't be getting paid at all instead it will just help the network there
can be many reasons for that but i'm not really sure exactly why so i wouldn't be able to give
you an explanation so now these manufacturers have different looks and some are able to be
outdoors and while others can only be indoors but in general they are all very similar and
one won't make you more money than the other although there is one thing you want to keep
an eye on and it is the frequency you want to make sure that you get the proper chip frequency
for your region which i will cover later on in the conclusion when i also talk about where i bought
mine from now the hotspot miner i will be using in this video was sent to me by the team at helium
it is the original design that is not produced anymore but the setup process will be identical
to the other miners as well so let's go ahead and jump right into the setup setting up the hotspot
miner is super simple unbox your parts connect the antenna power plug and optionally you can connect
your ethernet but you can also set it up through wifi and then after that you want to go ahead and
download the helium app now this app is going to be used to manage all your hotspots if you
got more than one and it's also going to be your wallet for the hnt that you will earn so do make
sure that you save that 12 word seed phrase somewhere safe and never share it with anyone
after you have the app installed and backed up your seat phrase now you want to go ahead and add
the new device select the manufacturer that you got it from and then proceed with what shows on
the screen it does not take more than five minutes to set it up the team at helium made it super
simple to get going with this your helium miner will need some time to synchronize so give it
up to three days and then check up on it you will start getting hnt tokens based on how well it does
and that depends on multiple different factors so before we get into that let me briefly explain the
reward structure the reward structure can be a bit confusing at first so i will try my best
to clarify it as much as i can so the first thing you will notice that it is broken into 6 different
things first you have the proof of coverage challenger challenges as well as witnesses
and this is where most of your rewards will come from how i understood this is that a challenge
is just a means for the hot spots to prove their location the way that the flow goes is that a
hotspot would initiate a challenge to a random hotspot in the network once every 240 blocks which
comes out at approximately 2 hours this hotspot will not be considered a challenge and it needs
to acknowledge the challenge and send information back about its location proving that it is online
and providing coverage and then the witnesses are the hot spots that are near you once they
witness the operation they also get rewarded for it same goes if a hot spot near you gets a
challenge and your hot spot witnesses it so it's just a way to maintain the network and make sure
that every hotspot is up and running and providing coverage now like i mentioned this makes up the
biggest reward percentage and it only relies on the location of your hotspot if you have it in a
dead area with not many hotspots around you then you won't be making much from this at all which
i will cover more in the locations part of this video and then the next reward is the consensus
group now for the consensus group selection after doing some digging i came out with this summary
right here so it starts with 16 members and per epoch four new members will be selected while
the 12 remain the same which they end up being replaced in the next three epochs so once four
epochs are passed that means all 16 members are changed because we're changing for each epoch now
new epochs are generated every 30 blocks and each block is 30 seconds so a new epoch is created
approximately every 15 minutes now the reward of being selected as a consensus group member
is around 45 hnt now this is for the average some people might get a lot more some people might get
a lot less so for example if we take a look at this site where it shows the different rewards
we can see that in the last 24 hours some hnt miners made over 200 or 100 hnt some of them even
almost did 500 hnt which is a crazy amount of hnt which means being selected as a consensus member
it's like basically winning the lottery with hnt miners now the odds of being selected are not so
bad so once i did this calculation it was around 24 and 315 active hotspots in the past 30 days and
every hour it's eight new members being selected so if we do the math for this then you have a
probability of being selected once every 127 days now one thing about consensus group selection that
it won't be there forever in august once their validators go live these rewards will go to the
validators rather than the hotspot miners so do expect this part to go away later on which can
lead to a six percent drop to the incentives for the hotspot miners now after the consensus group
there is also the security tokens now this can be a little bit misleading but this is not for
the hotspot miners it's just for the holders and investors of hnt so don't expect to get paid from
that on your hotspot miner and then finally you have the network data transfer the network data
transfer is what happens when a user uses the data credits on the helium network to be able to send
some data like we talked about before so when the companies use the helium network you also do get
paid from that now this doesn't play a big part in the rewards as of now so for example you can
see here in the last 24 hours the data credits resulted in rewards of less than one hnt so it's
not that big of an amount at all but eventually when more data is being used the rewards will
increase with it now you guys can also notice the percentages here in the h t distributions but if
you want to find more accurate information i would definitely come to the sidebot.com and then look
at them here and then you can just calculate the percentage so if the words of hnt were 102 000 in
the last 24 hours then you can see here almost around 70 of that was just through witnesses
and then challenges was almost like 20 and then the rest of it was less than 10 so this would be
the best way to get accurate and up-to-date information now there are many things that
are coming into the network that will change the profits and one of them being all the hnt miners
that are being ordered now which will be online from june to september and then also the having
that's coming up on august i will be talking about that also later on in the video now that wraps it
up for the rewards now let's go ahead and talk about locations for the hnt miners and give you
guys some tips on placing them as well as how much potential you'll be making from this miner
understanding your location potential is a crucial step to mining with the hotspots now there are
many advanced ways that you can calculate your location profitability based on different factors
but for this video i will be keeping it simple so you can have a good idea of what you need to know
the main factor is being near other hnt hotspot miners but also not too close to them so the ideal
distance between you and other hot spots should be around 300 meters and to visualize that it will be
around three football fields now there's another hot spot in your building that does not mean it's
over for you you can still get rewards but both of you will get less rewards comparing to just
one device per 300 meters the worst case is when you're alone and then there is no devices near you
at all that will cause your incentives to be very little and it does not help the helium network
build out through the proof of coverage so one of your solutions if you fall under this scenario
is buying at least two hotspots and then placing them in someone's house that you trust around you
or convincing your friends to take a look into getting some of the hotspot miners now to get a
good idea of how much you will make in your area go to the network explorer and explore hotspots
around you and see how much they make daily you can find all the hotspots that are online here
which also means if you send someone your hotspot name they will know exactly where that hotspot is
located so do be careful on that side for privacy now just keep in mind that the profitability that
you will see on the explorer that doesn't mean that it will be guaranteed whenever
you get your hotspot as well there's a lot of things that will change and i will cover that
right after we finish this section there's also a couple of tips that you can follow to help
you achieve maximum coverage and reach to other hotspots first one is make sure that your hotspot
has a good line of sight placing your hotspot near a window and avoiding as many walls as possible
can help your hotspot reach and witness further devices which also means the higher the hotspot is
placed the better line of sight it will have so if you live in an apartment that is on a high floor
then you will be able to reach more hot spots and witness more hot spots and the second tip would
be shopping for a stronger antenna now this is not required but is just another way to increase your
coverage of your hotspot and reach more hotspots around you so keeping that in mind you'll be able
to place your hotspot efficiently to maximize your rewards there are also many tools out there
that you can use to get a better location for your hotspot miner such as cloud rf which will
calculate your line of sight so feel free to look into these different tools and see which one helps
you the most also one thing worth mentioning is that when you decide to transfer your hotspot to
a new location it does come for a small fee of 10 but the process is fairly simple and it can
be done through the helium app so now that covers everything so far about the helium hotspot miner
and the network in general so now hopefully you have a good idea of the profitability the process
and everything in between so now we can go ahead and talk about the future of helium
especially for the hotspot miners will it always be rewarding as it is now the number of helium
tokens that are mined yearly are a fixed number so even if more users come to the helium network
there will still remain a fixed amount of hnt that will be distributed to old hotspot miners
currently before the having 60 million hmt are mined yearly averaging around 5 million a month
in sitebot the numbers show differently due to inconsistency with the data so do disregard the
total rewards that are shown there until it's fixed so to calculate the estimated profits we
first want to take a look at the hotspots in the network the hnt hotspots are exponentially
increasing up to 500 devices are being turned on every day so the profitability generally will only
go down when more devices come online but that does not mean everyone will experience profit loss
those who live in areas that are not saturated with helium hot spots they might experience
profit increase if they get a couple of hot spots around them which will help with the witnesses and
everything that deals with rewards now if you live in a saturated area with a lot of hot spots around
you and you get even more hot spots there then you can expect less profits there the way we will
calculate the profitability is by the total hnt mind a month divided by the total hotspots that
are currently online like that we can get a good average of what someone can expect to be making
pre-halving and then we can also get a good estimate of what expected to be making post-having
so the total hnt mind is 5 million a month and then we can divide that by 30 000 for the total
hotspot miners that are online which gives us around 166 hnt a month or an average of 5.5 hnt
a day current price of hnt is 16.60 so that means a day you can be bringing in around 92 dollars
which comes out to almost three thousand dollars a month now this is just the average so some people
will make less than two hnt while others will make more than 15 hmt based on your location so
it's just a rough estimate for the rewards based on april 29 2021 and as it seems so far they don't
look bad at all so what will it look like two to three months down the line after the having occurs
and a lot more hot spots get online an email sent out by helium shows that there were 150k
orders of the hotspots at the date of the email was sent since then we can assume that the number
most likely climbed up to 200k hnt miners so the current network is 30k devices and now we can
add the 200k devices that will go online in the couple of the upcoming months and then we will
have the total of 230k devices now this is just an estimate it won't be accurate it might be more or
might be less the halving will happen in august approximately in 93 days from this video being
posted which means then the rewards will be cut in half so instead of 5 million hmt among our mind it
will be 2.5 million now the 2.5 million divided by the 230k hotspots that will give us an average of
around 10 hnt per month per hotspot comparing to 166 hmt a month it is definitely a big drop but
also like before some will make less than one hnt a month while others can make up to 15 or more hnt
a month based on your position and your coverage but that will be hard to predict i am sure you're
surprised and you think it's not worth it but there's also good in this and that is that the hnt
token price can definitely go further up now this is just price speculation but if hnt price goes up
to 50 or a hundred dollars then making 10 hmt a month is still amazing especially for the price
point of this hnt miner which is less than 500 now that basically gives you a look in the future of
the potential outcome for the hotspot miners now as a conclusion and my plan of action i think this
project is brilliant not just from the mining aspect of it but also the network in general
i think it's a great idea and a revolutionary technology that was long overdue there are also
announcements on the 5g network which is also crazy especially the fact that us consumers will
be able to use it as well with our phones that support 5g but more on that when they release it
now what i did was i ordered five hnt miners from sp north america now the reason that i ordered
five of them is because i do have five locations that i can place these helium hotspots in
from friends and family and the best thing about it is that it's pretty cheap to buy these devices
it's 500 per device now i'm not saying 500 is not a lot but comparing to gpu mining 500 is basically
your power supply now i'm still a full-on gpu miner but this is just something nice to have on
the side so the reason that i bought five of them from sb north america is because sp north america
is run by a friend of mine wolf of bitcoins he also connected me with helium for the hotspot that
they sent me the rebrand is powered by syncrobet which is one of the official manufacturers for
the helium hotspots so here on sp north america you can see the model selection and since i live
in canada i selected the first choice which is the 915 hertz which is compatible with us
and canada for europe you would want to select the 868 hertz option and eventually sp north
america is also adding the 915 hertz for australia which runs on a different zone from the one on us
or canada now if you don't know what frequency you will be using i will leave a link in the
descriptions below that has a list of different countries and their frequencies now not all of
the countries are filled in but you can just take a look at it and try to figure it out from
there and alternatively if you don't find your answer there you can always ask helium in their
discord server they're always there to help even i myself bombarded them with questions until i got a
timeout from their bot they were super helpful and i'm sure they will answer your questions
so now if you decide after this video on buying a hotspot miner feel free to use my link below
for sp north america which will give you five percent off at checkout using the coupon friends
five off you can always feel free to browse the other manufacturers as well the delivery date
will remain similar across all of them estimated deliveries are from june to september based on the
batch you make it in currently sp north america is on their second batch which ships in july to
august one thing i recommend avoiding is buying hnt miners from ebay for five thousand dollars
and up i feel like that is too risky and a lot can just go wrong so please be careful and also
be very careful of fake distributors if it's not on the helium website and approved by them
then just don't buy it now that wraps up the video guys i hope you enjoyed this video and
i hope it answered your questions if you have any questions or anything that i messed up please let
me know in the comments below and if you liked the video make sure to leave a thumbs up and if you're
new here make sure to subscribe thank you guys for watching and i hope you have a wonderful day
you